Windows 8 Updates

It may sound obvious, but make sure you are always up to date with the latest updates for Windows 8, this will insure your operating system should run smoothly.

Follow this link for some more info from Microsoft about their updates.

Use Task Manager

With the new look task manager you can see in detail what exactly is using up all your CPU, RAM, bandwidth and hard drive. With this information you should be able to work out what programs/apps are making your PC run sluggish.

Toolbox for Windows 8

Try this very useful tool, it allows you to use up to 6 different tools at once on your screen including Facebook, Twitter and a browser. This is very handy if you work from a large screen but useless if you want to use it from a smart phone.

Because of the numerous Apps you may be running or opening in Windows 8 it can get annoying when you get many different warnings from your system about the Apps. Here is how you can access the settings;

Why would you want to increase or decrease the size of the border padding for any window you open? I have no idea but here is the regedit tweak you need to do it:

Open Regedit

Navigate here: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

Right click on PaddedBorderWidth and click Modify

You will see this;

You can set the border between 0 (no border) and 300 (large border). Personally I have no idea why you would want a border of 300, maybe you could set it on you friends computers to annoy them! You just need to reboot your machine and you will see that you have a new border size.

If you need to make changes to your computer through the windows registry then you will have to be able to open up the registry editor. This will work for all the different versions of your Windows operating system, although you may see User Account Control box pop up in the newer versions.

Note: It is advisable to backup your entire registry before you make any edits to it.

Here is how to access regedit:

Click start

In search box type run

In the run box type regedit

Click ok

You should be able to now see Regedit, from here you can navigate to where you need to go and make any changes you want.

If you want to clean up your registry so your entire computer will run faster then run this software, just click it and follow the prompts – RegCure registry cleaner

These animations do look ‘pretty’ but after a while I find that they just get annoying, here is a quick tweak you can do to disable them alltogether.

In your start screen search type computer

Right click on computer and select properties

Click advanced system settings

Select settings under performance

Uncheck the first in the list: Animate controls and elements inside windows

Click OK

That will remove all the animations from your start screen and it should also make it run a little faster, to make the animations run again simply go and check the “Animate controls and elements inside windows” and select ok.

Windows defender is an anti spyware software that is automatically installed on numerous Windows versions but you are unable to remove it through your add/remove feature, so you will have to disable it instead.

Here is a simple guide on how to disable windows defender on Windows Vista: